Local

Elaine Adkins is excited to have a $5,000 donation to help feed hungry families this holiday season.
Adkins, executive director of HOPE in Lancaster, recently accepted a $5,000 grant award from BI-LO Charities. HOPE is a local organization that provides food and help with utility bills for local families.
Adkins traveled to Columbia on Nov. 15 for a special BI-LO holiday event, though at the time she had no idea HOPE would be awarded grant money. Adkins applied for the grant earlier this year.

Bill Sumner will once again hold local elected office.
Sumner defeated Ronald Burke on Tuesday in a special election for the District 4 seat on the Lancaster County school board. The seat had been held by Dr. Peter Barry, who died in September.
Sumner got 254 votes (70 percent) and Burke got 103 (29 percent), according to the unofficial results. Al Simpson, who withdrew from the race weeks ago, got two votes.

Flipping through the crinkled pages of Walmart’s Black Friday store advertisement, Ladawn Garris and her family were on their annual hunt for good deals.
Garris, along with her daughter, Jessica, and sister, Mary, were at the Lancaster Walmart early Friday morning, searching for Christmas gifts at low prices. By 9 a.m., they had already toured the electronics department and loaded two HP printers into their shopping carts. Both printers were 50 percent off Friday.

Voters will return to the polls Tuesday to decide who will be the new District 4 representative on the Lancaster County school board.
Ronald Burke and Bill Sumner are vying for the post, which was held by Dr. Peter Barry, who died in September.
District 4 covers neighborhoods near the University of South Carolina at Lancaster and areas north of the city of Lancaster, including the Charlotte Highway corridor.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the participating precincts.

The “water war” between North Carolina and South Carolina is apparently drawing to a close.
The North Carolina municipalities Concord and Kannapolis asked the state of North Carolina to allow them to withdraw 46 million gallons of water a day from the Catawba River, which flows through Lancaster and Chester counties. The Catawba is the source of drinking water for both the Lancaster County Water and Sewer District and the Chester Metropolitan (water) District.

INDIAN LAND – Deputies are searching for a man who stole a television from the Indian Land Walmart and then struck a car in the store parking lot.
Employees at the Walmart, located near the North Carolina line on U.S. 521, called the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 16 about a man they observed stealing several items, according to an incident report.

Fake money has turned up at two locations in Lancaster County.
In separate incidents last week, counterfeit money was used at two different retail locations.
On Nov. 19, an employee with Enmark gas station on Great Falls Highway called deputies about a fake $20 bill used during a purchase, according to an incident report. The employee said a customer tried to pay for an item with the counterfeit bill about 7:20 p.m.

A suspicious car that tried to pull over a woman in Indian Land is connected to the arrest of man who impersonated a police officer in York County last week.
Lancaster County Sheriff Barry Faile said the incident, which occurred in the early morning hours of Nov. 18, is tied to a Fort Mill man who was arrested by the York County Sheriff’s Office late last week.
“This is the same suspect and the same victim as mentioned by York County,” Faile said Wednesday.

The S.C. Highway Patrol is reminding motorists about the harms of distracted driving as they travel on the highways this Thanksgiving weekend.
The official Thanksgiving holiday travel period began at 6 p.m. Wednesday and runs through 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
In 2009, nine people died in vehicle collisions during that time span. Troopers are out in full force over the holiday period, hoping to reduce that number this year.

Lancaster County’s jobless rate dropped 1.5 percent from 15.7 percent in September to 14.2 percent October, according to the latest figures from the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce.
The county ranked ninth in the state in unemployment in October.
South Carolina’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased to 10.7 percent in October from a rate of 11 percent in September.